Chapter 35. Damien
“ I s the trace still up on Adrian’s phone?” I barely recognize my voice.
There is a pause, and I immediately know they lost him.
This day just keeps getting better and fucking better.
“He turned his phone off about an hour ago. Just after the ping came up near the Blackstone.”
So, what? Where did they go from there?
My penthouse? Did she take him up to my fucking home? To let him fuck her everywhere I just did last night? This morning?
My blood is nearly boiling, and I can’t stop my haggard breathing.
Marcus is still talking, his voice steady, rational—trying to keep me grounded, but there’s no steadying me now.
“Damien, listen to me. Maybe it doesn’t look like what you think.”
I turn to him, my glare sharp, cutting. He knows as well as I do—it’s all right here. The pictures, the fucking video, the evidence staring me in the face.
I rake a hand through my hair, trying to shove down the rage clawing up my throat. My chest feels tight, my skin hot with the kind of fury I haven’t tasted in a long, long time.
“You can see it with your own goddamn eyes, Marcus,” I bite out. “She’s been fucking him. Or working with him to fuck me over. Either way, this wasn’t an accident.”
Marcus exhales, rubbing his jaw, his expression unreadable. “Then call her.”
I scoff. “What?”
“Ask her yourself.” His voice is even, calculated. “Call her. Maybe there’s another explanation.”
I don’t believe there’s another explanation. What else could there be?
But I need to hear her say it. I need to hear her lie to me one last time before I tear her world apart.
My jaw tightens as I pull my phone from my pocket, my thumb hovering over her name.
I press dial and put the call on speakerphone.
The line rings once. Twice. Three times.
The longer it rings, the harder my pulse hammers in my chest. Every second she doesn’t pick up, the deeper the knife twists.
She knows. She fucking knows, and she’s a goddamn coward.
Just when I think the call is about to roll to voicemail—it’s answered.
A sharp inhale, then—“Damien.”
I go completely, violently still.
Every cell in my body freezes, and black forms around the edges of my vision.
Motherfucking Adrian Kingston answered her phone.
His breath is heavy, a little uneven, like he’s been interrupted—like he’s busy.
I look at the screen again, praying for a miracle that I accidentally dialed the wrong number.
But it’s hers.
My blood runs cold. My fingers tighten around the phone. “Where is she?”
“Now’s not a good time,” he adds, exhaling what sounds too damn much like a groan.
A cold, slicing silence fills the room, and something in me fractures as I hear what’s happening on the other end of the line.
The same fucking thing she and I did this morning. My insides are in knots, on the verge of implosion.
Adrian chuckles softly, low and knowing. “Oh—that’s it, sweetheart. Right there.”
A sound filters through the speaker. Soft. Wet. A muffled giggle.
The ground tilts beneath me.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t fucking see through the rage that explodes in my chest.
Adrian sighs, dragging out the sound, his voice slow, taunting. “She’s talented, you know? Always had a way with her mouth.”
My hands curl into fists, my pulse thundering in my ears.
“You’re lying,” I grind out, my voice deadly, trembling with fury.
“Am I?” There’s a smirk in his tone, something viciously smug. “You want to deny it, baby?”
Another fucking choked giggle. She won’t fucking answer because her mouth is stuffed with his cock. My stomach churns.
I hear Marcus inhale sharply beside me, but I can’t even look at him. All I can hear is her.
My Elena.
No… not anymore. She never was.
Adrian lets out a low, satisfied sigh. “She’s so fucking good at her job, isn’t she?”
Something inside me breaks apart, shatters, and burns.
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth might crack. My chest is a live wire of fury, rage, and something deeper—something worse.
I grit out, slow and lethal, “I swear to God, you’re going to fucking die for this.”
Adrian just laughs. The sound is cruel, dripping with mockery.
“Careful, Wolfe,” he muses, his voice light, entertained. “She’s just doing what she does best. Entertaining powerful men. Wasn’t that the whole arrangement you hired her for?”
The world tilts.
I feel like I might snap apart at the seams.
For half a second, I hesitate.
My grip tightens around the phone, my breath dragging in, ragged, uneven. There’s a whisper of something beneath the fury—something hollow, aching, desperate to find a reason, any reason, to believe this isn’t what it looks like.
But then Adrian laughs again, smug and victorious before he groans loudly, and that whisper dies.
I see red.
“Go to hell.”
“Already there,” he murmurs. “And your girl?” He chuckles. “Actually, she never stopped being my girl. She’s on her knees right in front of me.”
Everything explodes when he disconnects the call.
With a growl ripped straight from my soul, I pick up the crystal decanter of whiskey next to me and throw it across the room, shattering it on impact.
My breath is ragged, my vision blurred at the edges. My muscles coil so tightly I think I might combust, might punch through the walls, might tear this entire fucking building to the ground.
Marcus doesn’t say a word.
Because there’s nothing to say.
Elena is a fucking snake.
And Adrian?
I’m going to end him.
The room feels like it’s collapsing inward, the weight of everything suffocating as the reality of this mess tightens around me like a noose.
I barely register the sound of my phone vibrating against the table until Marcus glances up from his laptop, his expression grim.
“Calloway.”
Shit.
I swipe to answer, already bracing for impact. “Richard?—”
“You arrogant son of a bitch!” His voice is a crack of thunder, livid, shaking with barely restrained fury. “What the hell have you done?”
Every muscle in my body tenses. “What are you talking about?”
“What am I talking about?” He barks out a harsh, humorless laugh. “You tell me, Wolfe! Because your entire goddamn deal just got leaked to the press. Every single fucking detail—the merger, the financials, the development plans, the legal filings. All of it.”
My pulse slams into my ribs.
No.
That’s not possible.
I push off the table, pacing now, my jaw locked so tight it aches. “That’s impossible.”
“Oh, is it?” Calloway bites out. “Then maybe you should check the New York Times, because that’s exactly where it is. Front. Fucking. Page.”
I whip my head toward Marcus, who’s already moving, pulling up his phone, his face set in grim lines.
“Every goddamn executive board member is calling me,” Calloway continues, his voice a lethal growl. “The press is salivating over this. Do you have any idea how catastrophic this is?”
I do.
I fucking do.
Confidentiality is the backbone of a merger this size. Any breach—especially one this massive—would destroy everything.
This isn’t just an inconvenience.
It’s a fucking nuclear bomb.
I shove a hand through my hair, gripping the back of my neck. “We didn’t authorize this. We have no leaks internally?—”
Calloway scoffs, the sound biting through me like a blade. “No leaks?” His voice is pure disbelief. “Then tell me, how the fuck did the New York Times get a copy of the commissioner’s email?”
The words slam into me, knocking the air from my lungs.
“What?”
“Oh, don’t play dumb, Wolfe.” His voice is laced with disgust. “The email, the soil surveys—the ones you conveniently didn’t tell me about. The same ones that put half the development sites in question and could tank this entire fucking deal. You sat on that information. And now the entire world knows about it before I did.”
Fuck.
My grip tightens, fingers digging into my scalp as I pace, my mind scrambling.
That email came in the night of the ballgame. Marcus and I were still working through the details. We hadn’t told Calloway yet because we were handling it.
And now…
Someone leaked it.
And it makes me look exactly like the corrupt piece of shit Adrian painted me to be.
Calloway exhales sharply, his patience shredded. “You kept critical information from me, and now it’s out in the open. What the fuck am I supposed to think?”
“This wasn’t us,” I grit out, barely keeping my temper in check. “We wouldn’t leak our own deal.”
Calloway scoffs again, the sound cutting. “That’s exactly what a desperate man would do, wouldn’t he? Someone trying to get ahead of a problem before it collapses under him.”
Jesus Christ.
Adrian played this perfectly.
He knew about the soil surveys before Calloway did.
Because Elena knew.
Because she was right next to me when Marcus showed me the email. When I couldn’t focus on anything except how close her body was to mine.
I thought she was working on a way to think ahead if the Calloways brought it up during the ballgame. She was actually thinking of how she and Adrian would use it to their fucking advantage.
The sharp sting in my chest intensifies.
That’s how they’re working this.
Elena was never just a pawn. She’s the primary fucking weapon.
I grit my teeth, barely keeping my rage from spilling over. “This was an attack,” I bite out. “Someone wants this merger dead.”
“And I’m supposed to believe it wasn’t you?” Calloway’s voice is cold, laced with unshakable distrust. “Jesus, Damien. Adrian was right.”
The words hit harder than they should.
Because hearing them makes it fucking real.
He believes Adrian over me.
Calloway lets out a slow, heavy breath, like he’s already written me off. “You have until nine a.m. tomorrow,” he says, his voice devoid of the warmth it once held. “To fix this. To find out who’s behind it and prove you had nothing to do with it.”
The line goes dead.
I stare at my phone, my pulse pounding, my fury boiling over into something lethal.
Marcus doesn’t say anything—just turns his phone around, the New York Times article lighting up the screen.
I barely skim it.
I don’t need to.
I already know what it says.
Merger of the Decade Collapses: Wolfe & Calloway’s Deal on the Verge of Ruin Amidst Leaks and Scandal.
Everything I’ve built.
Everything I’ve worked for.
Everything I trusted in Elena.
All of it—fucking destroyed.
I lift my head, my vision red. “Find them.”
Marcus doesn’t hesitate. “Already on it.”
I punch my phone too fucking hard. The security office at the Blackstone answers in a second.
“Mr. Wolfe.”
“I have a security breach and need to lock down my penthouse. No one goes in.” I bark it out and hear someone on the other end typing rapidly on a computer keyboard.
“The code has gone out, Mr. Wolfe.”
“Good.”
“Shall we secure your fiancée, Mr. Wolfe?”
What?
It’s like a fucking ice bath has just been poured over my head.
She’s at my fucking penthouse.
With Adrian.
I put my phone to my chest and lock eyes with Marcus. “They’re at the fucking Blackstone,” I grit out between clenched teeth, putting the phone back to my ear. “No, say nothing. Do nothing. I’m on my way.”
I don’t want the building security to alert them. I want their fucking heads on a platter and the satisfaction of pummeling Adrian Kingston’s pathetic face with my own hands.
“Call me if anyone leaves.”
My legs are already moving toward the conference room door as I end the call.
“You shouldn’t drive like this, Damien,” Marcus calls out after me, knowing damn well there is nothing that will stop me.